The present invention relates to a residual-current circuit breaker.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
Residual-current circuit breakers for the protection of humans and electrical installation arrangements from hazardous residual currents are known which cut off an electric network upon the occurrence of hazardous fault currents. The disadvantageous aspect is that such a cut-off of an electric network is mostly undesirable by the user or causes high costs in many cases, such as the supply and control of processes which must not be interrupted, the performance of complex technical processes or in the production of technical glasses in which controlled cooling periods in the magnitude of several months can be found. Any interruption of the power supply during such a process causes high costs and an irresponsible waste of raw materials. A further problem is especially the interruption of power supply in computer applications, which may lead to data loss up to an endangerment of human life.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved residual-current circuit breaker to obviate prior art shortcomings and to reduce unexpected cut-offs of a network to be protected.